Defeating My Arch Nemesis: Using Writing to Learn Math

When I was in first grade, a skinny six-year old sporting long piggy tails and buck teeth, I quickly learned that math was very hard for me.  Longingly I watched my friends go out for recess while I sat inside and attempted to fix the math problems I had done incorrectly earlier. I just couldn't do them right.

And when I couldn't do them right, my teacher would sit me in the corner. Humiliating. I was the girl constantly in tears in the corner, and the cute boy in class (who was a math whiz) thought I was some sort of weirdo (which I am....but still).

The experience created an instant mental math block that I have fought  my entire life. The rest of my grade school career was bleak in the math department, and I have to admit that I never passed a high school Algebra class.

When I started my college career at Parkland College, back in the mid-90s, I had to take basic math. I was not surprised and slowly worked my way up to beginning Algebra. The first day of my college Algebra class sent me into nervous fits. I felt like my six-year old self, only with straighter teeth and shorter hair.

I was determined to do better, and I only wanted to take this class one time. Due to the fact that I came from a large family with not so large of an income, it was up to me to pay for my schooling, and I knew that I did not want to pay to re-take an Algebra class. So, I had resolved to work my butt off and figure this whole math thing out even if it caused my hair to go prematurely gray.

I walked up to my professor before class, wish I could remember her name because she changed my life, and told her of my math woes. She smiled and nodded and asked me what my interests were. At the time my interests circulated around my boyfriend (so stupid!), but I managed to say something like, "Well, I really like English and Theater." She then told me that she had some tricks up her sleeves that could help me with my struggles, and we started class.

Well, I didn't believe her.

I had been told, by many teachers and tutors, that they knew exactly what to do to "fix" me and cure me of my math ignorance. So naturally I just took a deep breath preparing to weather the storm.

After my professor had handed out the syllabus, explained the schedule, and let us introduce ourselves, she dismissed the class for the day--then quickly asked me to stay for a few minutes. She told me that I would need a separate notebook for the class that would become my Algebra Writing log.  I looked at her like she was crazy.

She laughed.

"Kelly, have you ever done journal entry work in your writing or English classes?" she asked. I nodded yes and told her that journaling was one of my favorite things to do.  She then told me that I would be doing this for my homework and in-class activities.  My professor took out a notebook and showed me exactly what I would be writing in my log--it looked something like this:

• Date
• Topic or Chapter/Assignment Name
• Description of pages read in textbook, lecture notes, and in-class activity notes
• Main points from the section being assigned in a bullet point list
• Summary of main points from book/class written in paragraph form

Not only did she have me do this weekly math log, but she also assigned me paragraphs to write.  My professor would write an equation on the board each week, usually on Monday, and by Friday a paragraph was due to her that explained how to solve the problem and why I had decided to solve it in that way. 

I was kind of shocked that I was using writing do help me understand math.  I had never thought that "math" people wrote. In the article "Writing to Learn Mathematics" Bernadette Russek says, "Contrary to popular belief mathematicians must write and must write well...Writing is a valuable assessment tool. It is used to assess attitudes and beliefs, mathematics ability, and ability to express ideas clearly" (36).  Russek also suggests that writing is often used in the math department to "...open doors of communication with students who may have math anxiety or who have 'I hate math' feelings, students who have never really 'spoken' to their mathematics professors before" (36). 

I feel as if Russek might have been directing that last bit directly at me....

Thanks to my professor's willingness to use writing in the math classroom, I passed beginning Algebra with an A. The first A I had ever received in a math class my entire life. I'm still proud of that A.

I moved onward and upward and eventually managed to tackle a college Algebra class. I did not get another A, but I did get a B, and I was able to mark math off of the list of classes I needed to take to finish school.

I really, really, really wanted to take my passing math grades to my former first grade teacher and say, "HA! Take that! See! If you would have just been willing to teach me math in a language I understood, instead of sitting me in a corner, I would have been done with this a LONG TIME AGO."

I wisely did not do that, but man did I ever dream of it.

After I completed my general education requirements, I thought that I would never have to take a math class again. However, my children have proved me wrong (as they usually do), and I find myself helping them with their math homework. Unfortunately, my kids also struggle with math and I sometimes feel as if maybe I should not be the person helping them. 

It's kind of like the blind leading the blind.  So, we write about math. Each day we write out their assignment in paragraph form and then we talk about it and pretty soon those math problems are getting solved correctly. 

If you would like to read the rest of Bernadette Russek's article it can be found here.  As Writing Across the Curriculum becomes more prominent on college campuses and within K-12 curriculum, I'm sure that writing in the math class will be used more often.

EIU President William Perry has used writing in his math classroom, and in an April 2011 interview with the EIU Writes Blog writers (found here) Perry said that: "...mathematics has a language all its own, you all know; you’ve taken math, so you do a math homework; it’s one set of language. But now if you’re going to talk about how that relates to maybe football head injuries or supply and demand, you know these kind of things, you have to interpolate that for your audience. You have to convert mathematical concepts to plain English, and so that’s a valid exercise because I think in all of our lives, we’re always interacting with multiple audiences." 

To me multiple audiences means multiples discourses, which then equals various types of verbal and cultural languages. In a perfect world teachers will be able to teach in a method that answers the needs of all of their students, but that perfect world is more than likely not going to happen in my lifetime.

So, instead of waiting for that perfect world to arrive, try remembering the skinny little six-year old sitting in the corner of her first grade classroom. Don't be afraid to speak to students in languages they understand--even if that means writing in a math classroom.

The Power of Therapeutic Writing & Freewriting

The majority of posts for EIU Writes discuss matters that focus on college writing and professional writing.

For this post, however, I want to provide information about unstructured and personal writing that connect to important research done by James Pennebaker, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University Texas at Austin. In addition, scholars are using Pennebaker's research findings to influence pedagogy. For example, EIU's own Nia Klein wrote her excellent Master's thesis in English titled  It's Not Catharsis; It's Cognition: A New Approach to Emotion in Composition in 2010. And she's directed therapeutic writing groups for cancer survivors in the Champaign-Urbana area.

Pennebaker has produced important research over the past thirty years or so, and a recent article from Ode Magazine highlights his psychological research about therapeutic writing and how the words used in personal writing are markers of mental health and growth.

As Inge Schilperoord relates early on in "The Power of Pronouns," "Intuitively, we've known for centuries that this loose kind of writing [diaries, journals, freewriting] is good for our creativity. But what we didn't know until recently is that 15 minutes of free writing a day can help us fight cancer, high blood pressure, heart attacks, and loneliness--and that autobiographical writer who use a variety of pronouns (I and me but also we and you and they) laugh more and take fewer aspirins than those who stick to the first person singular."

Pennebaker and colleagues have done groundbreaking research about language use and the therapeutic uses of writing. And for those interested, on his departmental webpage, he has a page titled "Writing and Health: Some Practical Advice."

His advice coheres with the method of freewriting used in college writing classes made popular by Peter Elbow. As I enjoy saying when I introduce this activity and have my students freewrite in class, "Free your mind, and the ideas will follow." 

As evidenced by the page about "Freewriting & Focused Freewriting" by the Writing Across the Curriculum program at the University of Richmond, this method can be used in various classes, especially when analyzing important reading selections associated with the course. Freewriting can be used a powerful writing-to-learn activity to promote discussion, foster reflection, and help students make connections.

But what Pennebaker's research mostly focuses on is the therapeutic use of writing, and his recent book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, informs us that people "whose use of causal and insight words continued to increase as they wrote benefited the most, Pennebaker says. That's because causal-word use indicates that a person is making a story out of the experience" (Schilperoord). And "insight words" denote that a person is attempting to make sense of an experience.

Both Pennebaker's research about therapeutic writing and how instructors use freewriting in varied contexts remind me of a passage in "Reflections on Contemporary Currents in Writing Center Work" by Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede [Writing Center Journal 31.1 (2001)]. The authors describe how Lunsford and her student used conversation as a means of discovery: "as Andrea and the student sat there, he literally talked and wrote his way through his problem to a thesis -- a powerful one that was quite different from anything in his current draft. This is what we mean when we say that talking is important to writing and that writing, at its best, is 'epistemic' -- it creates knowledge rather than simply recording it" (16).

Like productive conversations in writing centers, freewriting and personal writing can create discoveries and support growth.

OWL-ternative Online Sources, Part 3

I'm going to hop onto Stephen's bandwagon and ride shotgun if he doesn't mind (do you?) to offer up an OWL-ternative (darn fine pun) website myself. After perusing a few online writing labs from various universities, I stumbled across University of Wisconsin at Madison's "Writer's Handbook." It doesn't match the thoroughness of Purdue University's OWL, unsurprising considering Purdue launched theirs in 1994 when the Internet was but a wee tyke. Nevertheless, it's a solid alternative that is easy to navigate and less overwhelming than its Purdue counterpart.

The main index is simple yet elegant; on the left side of the page is a purple (or green for all I know since I'm colorblind) area with links for such topics as "Improving Your Writing Style," "Stages of the Writing Process," "Common Writing Assignments," and "Grammar and Punctuation." All of these proceed onto further pages of links offering advice in sentence concision and comma usage, most of which offer solid examples.

What I found unique about UW-M's OWL is that one of the pages offers a "self-test and answers" link that allow you to "test your knowledge" of a given subject. Want to see how up to snuff you are at commas? Scroll to the bottom of the "Using Commas" page and you'll find a link that will initiate a pop-up with a few example sentences to see if you can correctly identify the issues in the sentences. Though most of the other pages lack this feature, it could be a feature that's "in the works" that I would love to see in a more complete form some day.

The Writer's Handbook also features a section on reference citation that, though it lacks the thoroughness of the OWL, still recognizes the other systems outside of MLA and APA. At first, I thought that the page on Chicago style is a bare-bone description noting that "Chicago or Turabian style places bibliographic citations at the bottom of a page or at the end of a paper." On the far right side, however, they offered links to learn more about the documentation style. Aesthetically, it was a little confusing as their MLA page has a clear "Table of Contents" in the center of the page while on the Chicago/Turabian page there is no "Table of Contents," just a side menu. For the unobservant, this menu will elude the reader and cause the reader to go to a different, easier to navigate OWL.

Though not perfect, The Writer's Handbook at The University of Wisconsin - Madison has the potential to grow into a pOWLerhouse (worse pun), offering up great ideas yet not as thoroughly executing them. Some pages are a bit roughly designed, but for the most part it's an impressive alternative to the Purdue OWL.

The Case Against the Lecture Format

In a recent article/story from National Public Radio this week, "Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool," Emily Hanford reports that scientists from various universities are changing their teaching methods because of the inefficacy of the lecture format. The link above provides the article, and you can also listen to the story as it ran on NPR stations.

As Hanford relates, "[t]his is something many people have known intuitively for a long time — the physicists just came up with the hard data. Their work, along with research by cognitive scientists, provides a compelling case against lecturing."

The story highlights what Professor Mazur calls "peer instruction," which also could be labeled "active learning."

And the article also provides a link to a documentary series by Hanford titled Don't Lecture Me.

I hope these links and programs provide readers something to think about, but I'd also like to note that the Writing Center and the pedagogy of Writing Across the Curriculum provide learning platforms that do not espouse the lecture format. 

Put simply, writing consultants (tutors) at the EIU Writing Center offer something akin to Mazur's "peer instruction." While consultants obviously don't grade students' papers, they provide solid feedback about their ideas and drafts while considering the rhetorical principles of audience, purpose, genre, and style, among many other important considerations such as supporting evidence, use of sources, and sentence-level concerns.

Also connected to the science professors who are changing their teaching methods, Writing Across the Curriculum offers pedagogical strategies and tactics that move away from the "sage on the stage" role.

Below are some links from EIU's Writing Across the Curriculum webpage that professors, students, and aspiring educators might find helpful. These links, along with many others, can be found on the "Resources for Faculty" page:

• WAC Clearinghouse Teaching Exchange
• "Integrating Writing Into Any Course: Starting Points" by Kate Kiefer
• Designing Writing Assignments
• Examples of Informal, Exploratory Writing Activities
• "What is Writing to Learn?" from the WAC Clearinghouse
• "Using Writing to Improve Reading" from the University of Hawaii at Manoa Writing Program
• Shelley's Quick Guides for Writing Teachers: Critical Reading Assignments

Recommended WAC Resource: Engaging Ideas

Last month the second edition of what some people refer to as the "WAC Bible" was published. Engaging Ideas now has a new edition.

If someone were to ask me what I think is the single best WAC resource out there, my recommendation would be Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom by John C. Bean. It's an outstanding resource.

Since the book's first edition in 1996, colleges worldwide have used this text as the basis for professional development workshops because it offers different ideas, approaches, and methods for using writing as a tool for critical thinking and reflective engagement in diverse disciplines.

Bean is a Consulting Professor of Writing and Assessment at Seattle University, and he's the author and co-author of a number of writing textbooks. As part of the second edition's "About the Author" section relates, Bean "has done extensive consulting across the United States and Canada on writing across the curriculum, critical thinking, and university outcomes assessment," and "In 2010 his article "Messy Problems and Lay Audiences: Teaching Critical Thinking within the Finance Curriculum" (coauthored with colleagues from finance and economics) won the 2008 McGraw Hill-Magna Publications Award for the year's best scholarly work on teaching and learning" (xxi).

Like the first version of Engaging Ideas, the second edition provides a progression from why to how. The book has four parts with sixteen chapters. Below are the chapter titles to show what the text covers:

1. Using Writing to Promote Thinking: A Busy Professor's Guide to the Whole Book
2. How Writing is Related to Critical Thinking
3. Helping Writers Think Rhetorically
4. Using a Range of Genres to Extend Critical Thinking and Deepen Learning
5. Dealing with Issues of Grammar and Correctness
6. Formal Writing Assignments
7. Informal, Exploratory Writing Activities
8. Designing Tasks to Promote Active Thinking and Learning
9. Helping Students Read Difficult Texts
10. Using Small Groups to Coach Thinking and Teach Disciplinary Argument
11. Bringing More Critical Thinking into Lectures and Discussions
12. Enhancing Learning and Critical Thinking in Essay Exams
13. Designing and Sequencing Assignments to Teach Undergraduate Research
14. Using Rubrics to Develop and Apply Grading Criteria
15. Coaching the Writing Process and Handling the Paper Load
16. Writing Comments on Students' Papers

While the book is geared more toward those of us who teach at the college level, the text would also benefit Education majors who could implement a writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines approach in their classrooms.

Squeaky Chairs

"Writer's Block" is a diagnosis for a writer's mental constipation. Although this term is so frequently used, I don't believe in it. The way that I see it, there are an infinite amount of words floating all around us, just waiting to be plucked from the air. When people say that they are experiencing writer's block, to me, that says one of two things: that they are either being too picky, putting too much weight to every word, or that they feel uninspired to write at all. Both of these are sad scenarios. One way to perpetuate writer's block is to blame it on forces outside of ourselves. This room is too... rectangle. This chair is too squeaky. I ate a cheeseburger for lunch. Cheeseburgers always make me tired. I can never write when Uncle Harry is in town. My computer keyboard has Cheetos stains on it. That shadow on the wall looks like a unicorn in the House of Representatives trying to answer a cell phone with a fire extinguisher. And the list goes on.

Once we realize that we can write anywhere, no matter how much of an acute angle our room makes, we will never struggle with blank pages again. One way to do this is to begin writing without expectations. Often, we have such a narrow idea of what we want our product to be that we don't allow the writing to just happen. Go with it. No matter what it is your writing, the key is just to start. The answer is in the act of doing, not complaining. In fact, I titled this blog without knowing how "squeaky chairs" were going to fit into a a blog about writer's block. Once you allow your ideas to flow through you, you will soon be amazed at the result. If you have a writing assignment, or are just pressuring yourself to write, then sit down and do it. Once you get into this habit, the term "writer's block" will seem like a fake doctor's note to you, too. So the next time that you have trouble writing, just sit down and start!

Practice & Resilience

As you can see below and to the right, Presentation Zen is one of our recommended blogs on this site.

While the author Garr Reynolds squarely focuses on giving presentations, which involve rhetorical concerns and writing obviously, in his posts, his March 24 entry, "Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Power of Japanese Resilience," is a reflective piece on the tragedy in Japan and how the Japanese people are resilient in the face of such a horrible natural disaster.

In one section of his post, Reynolds, who lives in Japan, offers his own perspective on the well-known proverb that is part of the title of his entry: "You see this ethic reinforced in all facets of Japanese culture including education, business, sports, the martial arts, the Zen arts, etc. It is especially important to remember the sentiment expressed in this proverb when times are dark. There are no quick fixes in life and anything of real worth will necessarily take much struggle and perseverance. Success does not have to be fast--what's more important is that one simply does their absolute best and remains persistent."

Personally, I've been drawn to this proverb for a long time. I think I was first introduced to it in junior high school from something I read if I remember correctly. Regardless and in what is a leap here because I'm moving from the situation in Japan to matters about writing, I've applied the principle to my life in general but specifically to my writing life.

Of course, comparing what's happened and what's currently happening in Japan to the trials and tribulations of people writing papers in college or faculty members writing papers for presentation and publication could venture toward the ridiculous, toward the absurd.

I have linked Reynolds' post out of admiration for the resilience of the Japanese people. I do not mean to equate the two in a one-to-one manner; that is not my intent. So I hope you stay with me here.

Creative Writing in the Classroom

Many people balk at creative writing. They see it as having few practical applications in the real world. Certainly, this stereotype is a by-product of creative writers themselves (and I am one of them), who talk about "art" more than they do "practice" or "practicality."

But creative writing can be used elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to mentor teach in a literature classroom, where creative writing featured prominently. The professor, Dr. Letitia Moffitt, used creative writing assignments to help students understand Shakespeare plays. These students were, for the most part, non-English majors, mostly sophomores, who had little previous experience with the Bard. By creating their own scenarios based off the plays (sometimes rooted in popular culture, such as The Lion King, Jersey Shore, and other programs), students were able to grasp the underlying thematic concepts inherent in the plays.

But creative writing can extend beyond English courses. In a mathematics course I had freshman year, our professor encouraged creative thinking in understanding advanced probability theorems. There was little of what we would traditionally call "writing" going on, but the process was still there; the idea was sound, and it helped us non-math students grasp these principles.

The same idea could easily be applied to other courses. Don't let the writing itself get in the way; often, it's the thought process behind the writing that is most useful. Use creative scenarios to get around difficult concepts. If students can be shown how abstract or difficult subjects relate to some aspect of their own life, they will better understand both the subject and why it's worth learning.

If you have any specific ideas or suggestions, please post them in the "Comments" section.

Practice Those Skills

Let me ask you a question. How many times have you heard that writing is a talent and that only the talented should perform it? I’m guessing more than once. I know I have. Well, I’m here to tell you that the idea of writing being for the talented is a bunch of malarkey. Writing is a skill. And like any skill, it must be practiced.

As Dan talked about in his post “Using Your Syllabi to Plan Your Writing Assignments,” it is essential to understand when all of your assignments are due. Having that information allows you the time to strategize your plan of attack. But that is only half the battle. Writing, as I said, must be practiced. It is incredibly difficult to write a larger length piece when you haven’t been writing throughout the semester. Trust me on that one.

For that reason, you need to make sure you are practicing your writing as much as possible. We are at the end of Week 6, meaning there are only 9 weeks left in the semester. That may seem like a lot of time, but it will go quickly, and if you haven’t been practicing your writing, those larger assignments are going to be even more difficult. But here’s the good news! There is still time to build up your writing stamina.

And I know what you’re thinking: “But Chris, what should I be writing? I don’t have the research I need to write that history paper, and I haven’t read that novel for that lit analysis paper.” Well that is a good question, and I thank you for asking it. Write anything. Putting words onto the page will help you. Write a poem. Write a short story. Write some fan fiction. Is that Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Han Solo fighting Dr. Robotnik? I think it is. Now it is up to you to create the story. There. I just gave you an awesome prompt. What? You don’t know who those people are? Well, looks like you have some research to do before you can write.

On a more academic side, you can write summaries for everything you read. If you read an article found on one of the library’s databases, then write a summary of that article. Writing a quick summary will do a few things: 1. It will ensure you understood what you read. 2. It gives you something to turn back to later on and remember what that article was about. 3. It gives you some material you might be able to pull into your actual paper.

As long as you are writing, you will be growing and learning. Write some fan fiction. Write a summary of an article. Take the extra step and write for class and yourself. So as we go into this weekend, take some time to do some writing. Practice those skills. You won’t regret it.